


Dust

by shelovestoship



Category: Magnum P.I. (TV 2018)
Genre: Angst, At least kind of?, Crime, Dark!Higgy, Drama, Everyone is a bit more lost, Everything is a bit wacky, F/M, Higgy is a very grown up seventeen year old, I've butchered their backstories and present to you the bony leftovers, Magnum is the moral compass - as always, Richard Dane was not a good guy, Robin is in it for one chapter, Romance, UST, Why do I always give Juliet the most traumatic backstories?, Young Adult-ish?, but not really, referenced underage pre-story, slow burn Miggy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28651884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shelovestoship/pseuds/shelovestoship
Summary: “Don’t worry,” Robin said, putting a hand on her shoulder and giving a little squeeze. “You’ll like Hawaii.”“So you say.”Robin convinces his seventeen-year-old Goddaughter Juliet Higgins to join him in Hawaii to help him solve a case where five strangers have 'magically' disappeared into thin air.The young adult (but somehow much darker) version of Magnum PI my brain thought was a good idea. Seriously, Higgy's got a real messed up backstory in this one...
Relationships: Hannah / Robin, Hannah/Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV, Juliet Higgins & Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV, Juliet Higgins/Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV, Richard Dane/Juliet Higgins, Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV/Abby Miller
Comments: 24
Kudos: 24





	1. Bad Champagne

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to this weird thing I've apparently decided to write. I'm going to try my very best to work on my WIPs at the same time, I actually got some stuff written for 'Cover Story' (if anyone remembers that one :P) and I know what I want to do with a Slightly Inconvicent Marriage I just haven't been inspired at all to actually work on it.
> 
> As for this story... well, everything will obviously be a bit different from the show. But before soon our favorite PI duo will be bantering away and solving crime together...kind of.

##  **Bad Champagne**

Airports were fascinating places. Juliet had always thought so. Same purpose for all of them, yet often so different in how they operated, looked and felt. The scents and sounds and how people moved through them.

Frankfurt was huge and modern, despite originally having been built over 80 years ago. She’d been many times over the past decade. Seventeen times, she calculated quickly, going back through her excellent memory. Once time per year she’d been alive. Thought most of the trips had been in the past four years.

She was at one of the business class lounges, sipping bad champagne. The place was decorated in a Japanese-European fusion style. Red walls, white square chairs and lots of that wispy grass. Bar in silver and glass.

It was almost three hours until her flight would start boarding. Feeling boredom started to creep in she set her magazine aside and began to tap her foot as she studied the people in the lounge. 

Old guy reading a financial magazine in German. 

Couple at the bar. He had a ring, she didn’t. 

A 20s something American with slicked-back hair that kept eyeing her legs. 

She smiled at him because maybe he would be a good distraction. Americans could be. Some of them. Richard would have said it was good practice for her. _You need people to like you. You need them to want to do things for you. That's the true way to win the game._

Before anything more could be done about the American, someone walked into the lounge. 

Someone she knew. 

He wore gray slacks, pink button-down and brown leather shoes. The watch on his wrist was worth as much as some people’s cars. Short buzzed -still mostly brown- hair topped it off, the style a remnant from his time in the military. Somehow he looked almost exactly like he did in the picture at the back of his first book, published two years before Juliet's own birth. 

Richard had had a copy of it, it had been their father’s, and he’d brought it everywhere they traveled. She wondered where it had gone. 

“Hello Juliet,” he said, sitting down in the white chair next to hers.

“Robin,” she said, politely, raising an eyebrow. “What a coincidence.”

“We both know it's not,” he said, giving her a smile. “This is the third lounge I tried.”

She said nothing. Sipped her champagne. Pretended it was delicious.

“You going to stay with your cousin?” he asked when she didn’t speak.

She had been, but when he said it, it made her feel predictable. _Predictably gets you killed._ “No.”

He tried something else. “Your grandmother?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Well,” Robin said, seeming to enjoy this question. She realized why he might and that annoyed her. Because he honestly didn’t think he could come back into her life and suddenly have some say in it, did he? “Seeing as you are seventeen and I am your godfather, where you go is actually very much my business.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Please. I haven’t seen you in four years.”

“Not because I didn’t want to see you.”

“Right,” she said, looking out the huge window at a plane just coming into dock. 

It didn’t matter to her that one of the few people she’d actually thought cared about her had just disappeared from her life because he didn’t get his way. Didn’t bother her one bit.

“Richard-”

“What about him?” she said, turning back around to give him a glare she hoped was devastating. Hoped would shut him up.

“Nothing.” He looked uncomfortable. “We just had different ideas of what should be done with you after your father’s death.”

“Stepfather,” she corrected sullenly. "And you wanted me to go to a boarding school in Switzerland"

“I’m surprised he told you that.”

He hadn’t. 

She’d found the conversation between Robin and Richard after hacking into his email when she was fourteen. 

But it pleased her to smile at Robin, like ‘ _yes he did, and you’ll never know what else he told me about you_ ’ sort of way.

“Here,” he said, handing her a plane ticket. 

“Switzerland?”

He shook his head. “Honolulu.”

“Hawaii?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling warmly. “I own an estate there. It’s beautiful.”

She betted it was. It was also on the wrong side of the world. From just about everything. She wondered if that was the point. She knew he had a loft in Paris. A cottage in Surrey. Townhouse in New York. Why not one of those? Those could have been useful.

“I’m not going to Hawaii,” she protested, getting up. “What would I do there? Surf? Get skin cancer?”

“How about go to high school?” he said, standing too. “Make some friends? Learn to drive?”

She resisted the urge to laugh at him. At the absurdity of _her_ going to _high school_. She had much better things to do. Work that needed to be completed. Revenge.

Instead, she said, “I know how to drive.” She did. She wasn’t twelve anymore.

“Of course I just meant-”

“And I already have my A-levels,” she said before walking over to the bar. 

“But you didn’t go to school for them, you had tutors,” he said, following, reaching for her arm. “Don’t you think going to a normal school would be fun?”

“Not particularly,” she said. 

School was a place adults had created to be able to store their children somewhere while they went to work. And the American school system? From what she knew of it, it was worse than most.

“I’m giving you a chance to be something else,” he said, like she should be jumping at the chance. “Fresh start.”

She looked at his hand on her arm, then up at him again. Made sure her gaze was as frosty as she could get it. He dropped her arm and stepped back in less than a second. She supposed that answered the question if he suspected what had gone down in Beirut. Suspected what she'd done.

“I don’t want to be something else,” she told him.

“How would you know? You haven’t tried,” he said. “All you know is your Richard’s world, your father’s world. If you give it a chance, you might like high school too.”

He lowered his voice, trying to do that thing adults sometimes did. Being kind and condescending all at once. Like they knew everything and she nothing. It had been happening less and less often the last year as she’d become more and more adept at passing for someone in her 20s rather than late teens. 

“I know what I don’t want.” She smirked. “Playing at being a normal family with you? Going to an American High school? Experiences I can do without. ”

“You’d think your last name was actually Dane,” he said, a hint of bitterness in his words. “You sound just like Jonathan.”

He meant it as an insult, but she didn’t feel like it was. Jonathan and Richard Dane had both been calculating and maybe even cold men, for sure. But they’d been brilliant too. 

“Thank you,” she said before asking the bartender in German. “ _Do you have Pommery by the glass?_ ”

“German too?” Robin told her and then to the bartender. “She’s seventeen.”

“This isn’t north America, Robin,” she told him, pityingly while the bartender shrugged and told her they didn’t have Pommery but offered her a refill of her current champagne. She accepted, mostly to annoy Robin. “Sixteen is the legal drinking age in Germany.”

“Well, not when I’m around.” He took the fresh glass off the counter before she could. “Back to the matter at hand.”

She sighed and they walked back to the chairs they’d been occupying before. A small part wanted to take him up on his offer. Go to a beautiful faraway place and just do nothing for a while. But she thought doing nothing would probably lead to too much thinking. About Richard. About Beirut. About the past, the future. And she had so much work to do, and now she was alone doing it. She didn’t have time to hide and think.

“This is nice champagne,” he said, sipping the bubbly liquid and proving that while money could buy many things, taste was not amongst them. 

“But you're more of a wine guy aren't you?” she said, remembering that he'd taken her and her mother on a wine tour back when she was twelve. It was one of the last good memories she had of her mother. 

“I am!" He seemed pleased she'd remembered. American's were easy like that. "Remember when I took you and Elsa to Italy? They kept insisting on pouring wine for you too and your mother kept telling you to give it a chance. You didn't though. You were always so careful."

"I was twelve." And back then she'd thought wine tasted like vinegar. "And one happy memory hardly makes me want to go with you to Hawaii."

"Thing is, I’m actually not asking you to go to Hawaii with me to help you. It’s more to help me,” he said it without looking at her. She found she wished he had. People were harder to read when you couldn’t see their eyes. “I'm working on something. Another true-crime novel. Unsolved though. But I found a link between a series of missing persons reports. Five unconnected people have disappeared without a trace in one area of Honolulu.”

“Go on,” she said, because this sounded like it might actually be interesting. 

"No leads," Robin said, his eye gleaming with some sort of mix of excitement and frustration. "One woman walks by one security camera and then five feet away, at the next camera? She's gone. Another one disappears from inside a store, her daughter waiting outside. It's almost magical how they just... _poof_."

"There is no such thing as magic."

“I agree. But it is strange. The obvious connection is one the police already figured out is the area,” he said, sliding his phone out. “But, what they failed to realize is that they all connected to one school’s football team. Different players, but still, there is a connection.”

He handed over his phone, letting her scroll through a gallery of the five missing people. 

“Okay?” she said, stopping at the alethic blonde girl in what she thought was a cheerleading outfit. Except for the fact that Juliet was not nearly as tanned (and would never wear such a shade of pink), they shared more than a passing similarity. “So what? You want to use me as bait?”

“No. I don't mean to put you in danger, besides, I'm not sure how? I doubt you even know the first thing about football." She didn't, but she was a fast learner. When she wanted to be. “What I’m looking for is a different perspective. I believe you will be able to offer that.” 

“I suppose,” she said as he took his phone back. "I might be able to suss them out, just being around this football team."

“Unlikely, this has been going on for three years so even if the person responsible was in high school when it started I doubt they still are. If it even _is_ just _one_ person behind it. But I figure you'll be able to make friends with the friends and family. Like you said, maybe the team? And they might tell you things they wouldn’t tell the police. Or me.” 

She thought about that for a moment then gave him a dark smile. “That’s fascinating. You know, Richard told me almost that exact thing once.” _Because you are young, unimportant and inexperienced, even clever men might wag their tongues in your presence and you will learn things I never could. We're going to use that._

“I guess we can both agree that he’d approved of this then?” Robin said, finishing the champagne.

She doubted it. An op. to capture a small-time criminal? If that even was what was going on? Could be these people were just leaving, disappearing of their own free will. So Robin could make more money on his next book? The only reason he’d do that was to make sure someone owed him a favour. Juliet thought it best to do the same.

Besides, what did she have to do this autumn? After Beirut, she’d planned to lay low, disappear while she was gathering intel and making plans. She could still do that in Hawaii. Even if she would be far away. And this little investigating into something mundane might prove to be a nice distraction. Better than her cousin CeCe was sure to be.

So playing detective in Hawaii? She touched the golden locket at her neck. It would be a distraction. But Richard had said, just a few weeks ago, that it was a marathon, not a sprint. Plus, she wanted a distraction. She hadn’t been sleeping well. Perhaps this wasn't such a bad idea after all.

She let go of the necklace. “Give me the ticket.”

He did. 

“It’s a beautiful place.”

Like that really mattered? All places were about the same underneath, ugly or beautiful; that was all exterior. 

“In return for me doing this, I’m going to ask you for something. I don’t know when or what. But it will be something above what you’d do for me as my godfather. And when I do, you will do it for me, no questions asked.”

“You don’t need to bargain for favors from me Juliet,” he said warmly. “Whenever you need me, whatever it is, if it is within my power, I will do it for you.”

She wondered if that was true. His blue eyes looked so honest she almost dared to hope maybe it was. Only, where had he been for the past four years? Why hadn’t he tried to be part of her life? Even when Richard told him not to? He could have tried. 

Maybe he was now.

The adult thing to do would be to forgive and forget. _You can’t be my little sister if you’re going to be useful to me. So from now on, I won’t treat you like a child and you will do your utmost to not act like one. Understood?_

She wasn’t a child. She hadn’t been for four years. So she would give him a chance. 

_One_. 

“This departs from gate 108,” she said, knowing the airport as well as she did she knew it would take them a good while to get there. “We should go.”

“You should,” he said, smiling. “I’ve got some business to tend to first. I’ll join you in a few days.”

“So once more, you are abandoning me,” she said, but made sure to soften her voice enough to know she was in fact joking. A plane ride, especially a 20-hour one, was better alone anyway. “Where are you going?”

“Marrakech,” he said.

She smiled. Richard and her had spent six months in the Red City last year. Some bad things had gone down (standard for them at that point) but mostly she’d enjoyed it. It was one of very few cities she’d decided she wanted to go back to one day.

“Yallah mashi,” she said in Arabic. _I’ll go with you._

He smiled. “No. I have a translator and you’d be too memorable for what I’m doing. Besides, I’m just going to be in and out.”

She made sure to remove all traces of emotion, excitement, off her face. It wasn’t like she’d truly wanted to go. There were plenty of other spots she'd rather have visited. 

“Don’t rush on my account,” she told him, reaching for her carry-on. “If I’m to pretend to be a high school student I hardly suspect I’ll lack things to occupy my time with.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder and giving a little squeeze. “You’ll like Hawaii.”

She didn’t much care if she did or not. “So you say.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, how does Magnum fit into all this? I'd love to hear your ideas!


	2. Shall We Go See?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Juliet makes some new friends...maybe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm happy for all the Americans who got a new president this week. I've also refrained from watching sneak peeks this week and just generally be so school focused I can't believe it's Friday tomorrow. What happened to this week? Whatever, I'm just excited for a new ep!!!

## Shall We Go See?

Juliet had once, very briefly during an op. Richard ran in Dubai, lived in something close to a palace. Robin’s Nest was the American equivalent, huge and sprawling yet with comfort in mind. And like a king or prince, Robin had named his house after himself.

“This is you,” Kumu said, pushing the door to an upstairs bedroom open. “It’s got a balcony with a beautiful view of the sunset.”

“Thank you,” Juliet said, rolling her carry-on, the only luggage she had, behind her as she walked inside. “It’s lovely.”

“You must be tired after that long flight,” the other woman said, smiling kindly at her. Juliet wasn’t sure what to make of her. 

Kumu had been the one that picked her up at the airport. Had chatted pleasantly yet without any real purpose during the drive and tour of the impressive estate. Explained how she worked with the artifacts and spent a few days a week at Robin’s Nest. To ask her if she needed _anything_. 

It seemed a little odd to Juliet. What did Kumu want from her? She must want something, she was being simply too nice for it to be anything else. But Kumu didn’t know who Juliet was. She was quite sure of it. Didn’t know any of her special skills, so what did the other woman want?

“Yes,” Juliet agreed but parked her suitcase by a chair. “I think I’ll try to rest a little. Maybe unpack.”

“Sounds good.” She began to turn away then stopped herself. “I almost forgot. Catch.”

She threw the keys to the black Porsche she’d picked Juliet up in. Juliet caught them without missing a beat.

“Mr. Master said you could drive the Porsche if you want.” She gave Juliet a scrutinizing look. “I told him I wasn’t sure that was such a good idea. But I can see why he’d trust you. Then again, Robin trusts everyone.”

“He does,” Juliet agreed, “Fool he is.”

“That’s not how I’d describe him.” The older woman frowned but then changed it into a smile a second later. “I’m heading home for the day. The dogs have been fed and Helena, the house-keeper, leaves in about thirty minutes. You’ll have the place to yourself. There are occasionally some strong currents here, so be careful if you go swimming alone. Or with someone. That can be equally dangerous... just in a different way.”

With that somewhat cryptic warning, she left, closing the door, leaving Juliet alone in the bedroom. 

The room was decorated in shades of beige and dark wood. It was pleasant. Soothing. Completely impersonal. Like most places she’d stayed, lived, over the past four years. 

She clutched her necklace with one hand and ran the one along the bottom of the bed. She wasn’t tired. One of her talents was sleeping on planes. Richard liked to tease her about it, but she’d always known he was jealous of her. And if she was being honest she had been having some troubling dreams, that seemed oddly real ever since Richard's death, so sleep held little apeal.

It was mid-afternoon anyway. No time for sleeping. She had things to do.

Putting her bag on the bottom of the bed she unzipped and then slid her hand along the side of the suitcase. Found the hidden little catch there and pressed her finger against the small touch-pad, that disengaged the magnetic lock to the hidden compartment at the bottom.

Took a fresh bundle of 100€ notes, two passports, her combat knife and her mother’s music box out, of there.

She put the music box on the low table by the chair. It was broken. The ballerina spun but the music didn't play. Had been like that before she got it. Probably she should have had it fixed, but now it seemed normal for it to be broken. 

The money and the passports she decided the base molding at the deep window was the best spot. She used the knife to pry it out and then cut away at a small section of drywall and then isolation. Made a nice little pocket to stash her valuables. 

Once the floorboard was back in place and the mess cleaned up, she unpacked her clothes and small assortment of toiletries. Then she sat for a moment, not sure what else to do.

Her computer had gone on the narrow desk in the corner. She probably should start working. On her own stuff. On Robin’s mystery.

Instead, she went downstairs and out, towards the garage and kennels. She’d hear dogs barking. Kumu had mentioned there were dogs.

She liked dogs.

Her mother had had a spaniel named Emma when Juliet was little, back when they still lived out in the country. Before her real father died. A cheerful slobbering creature that always wanted to play, was always happy to see Juliet. But there had been large barking hunting dogs too. Scary to a four-year-old. But the ground's keeper had taught her about them. How to act around them. How even the cruelest seeming of dogs could usually be turned into a friend for life by acting the right way. How to show you could be trusted but was not to be messed with.

The kennels ar Robin's Nest were the first thing that truly impressed her. They were large and clean. Access to an outdoor fenced area. Air-conditioned. A practical view of the ocean even. Better accommodation that half of the earth's population could ever hope for.

Zeus and Apollo read the nameplates. They were Doberman Pinschers. Sleek and powerful. Stunning. Pedigree of the highest order, these lads. Worthy to be named after gods, for sure.

They didn’t bark at her but paid close attention. Studied her. Clever, intelligent eyes taking her measure.

“Hello lads,” she said calmly. 

The metal gate that separated them was only waist-high. They could have gone over it if they’d wanted to. They still could. 

She didn’t know these dogs. They weren’t hers. She wondered who was responsible for them. Kumu? She didn’t seem the type. She knew she should leave... but that had never stopped her before.

“Sit,” she told the pair. 

They did.

She reached for the gate. Richard would have hated it. He’d have pointed out there was enough power in their jaws to crush her bones. That even if they were not quite her weight, they were all muscle, power and speed. That she was being crazy. That she should wait. Ask someone to introduce her to the _blood dogs_ if she had to be so _childish_ as to play with every _mutt_ she came across. 

“Hello lads,” she said, stepping into the kennel, inviting them to come to her. They did. 

And before long she’d made two new friends that would protect her with their lives. Just as she would do her utmost to protect and care for them now. Because that was how it worked.

Suddenly the dogs stopped wiggling and wanting to be petted, and tensed. Their ears and bodies turning towards a sound she couldn’t hear.

Then she could.

It was an engine. A powerful one. And it was clearly coming up the driveway to Robin’s Nest.

“Who could it be?” she asked the lads, turning towards the door. “Shall we go see?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who could it be..?


End file.
